Road to You
by Unforgettable Green Eyes
Summary: Sometimes it's the journey that counts. Sometimes it's the end of the journey that makes it all worthwhile. CloudXAeris.


**Note: **This is just _one_ of the ways I can picture the ending credits of KH1 to happen.

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing.

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_**Road to You**_

"This way," the blond man says briskly, without breaking his stride as he crosses toward the other side of the castle's entrance hall.

He follows the captain of the gummi ship down a long corridor, the sound of their footsteps echoing loud around them, bouncing off the stone walls.

The faint murmur of voices can be heard from within one of the rooms up ahead and Cloud's eyes narrow at the other man's back. He's not taking him to a bedroom apparently. Too bad. He could do with some rest.

Tired, he thinks, his feet almost dragging. The word doesn't even begin to cover it. The weariness he feels goes deeper than to just his bones.

He'd give his other arm for a bed right at the moment. Or a bench. Or to be alone so he can just stand where he is and close the eyelids that feel more like lead than flesh for one full minute.

The futility of his quest hovers over him, crushes down on him, feeling heavier than ever. The weight of a lifelong search, spent in solitude, this tedious, interminable journey he sees no way out of. It is intolerable.

Cid throws open a door and the voices swell out into the hallway. Standing behind him, Cloud stares mutely at the hard floor under his boots. He suddenly wishes he hadn't come with this irritable, hot-tempered man he'd met on the docks outside the coliseum. He doesn't even know why he'd agreed to it. But the terms of the contract he'd signed had finally been met—that stupid, reckless deal he'd entered into, that he never should have made it out of alive, and certainly not with his hide intact. It was only by a stroke of pure dumb luck that the boy and his companions had come, naïve, determined, unexpected. They'd turned everything on its head. The next thing he knew, all hell had broke loose, and in the ensuing chaos, Cloud had found himself freed. He didn't wait around; before the dust had settled, he'd beat it out of there.

Cid glances back over his shoulder, scowls at him. "What are you doing hiding back there? Get your butt in here!" He nods his head toward the room politely enough, if impatiently, but Cloud gets the feeling the pilot wouldn't think twice before hauling him in on his ass if he so much as considers balking.

He sighs. He's in neither the mood nor the shape to put up much of a fight just yet. Jet lag from a trip across the stars will drain a man like nothing else. With as much interstellar traveling as he's done, that's the one thing he's never gotten used to. Even a hundred back-to-back battles with the Heartless can't flatten him out anywhere this bad. He doesn't know how the other man can stand up on his feet, much less bark orders like some damned overzealous military drill sergeant.

He steps inside the musty room lined with heavy bookshelves against every wall and immediately sees three figures standing a few yards from the door.

"The hell you all doing in here!" Cid's voice booms into the room and the conversation inside grinds to a halt. "Don't you got a town to help fix up?"

The others look up and the girl standing with her back to the door turns around as the pilot gestures to him. Cloud hears her sharp intake of breath, drawing his eyes to her, and he thinks he catches a glimpse of something in the beautiful face staring back at him. But the thought is fleeting, elusive, not unlike a vision, and gone before he can try to get a proper read on it. He drops his gaze.

"Cid!" The girl with short black hair shrieks, sounding ready to jump up and down with excitement. "You're back!"

"And I've brought someone with me. Wait 'til you see him in action with that sword, Leon."

Cloud senses the other girl looking at him still, hears her light, graceful steps moving across the dark green carpet toward him, and he forces his reluctant feet forward as well, keeping his head down as he nears her, feeling more foolish with each step.

He should've just gone on as he'd been doing. Wandering, almost aimlessly, but not quite. Looking for something. For what, he has no idea. But when he finds it, he'll know.

That feeling of being lost, or rather, that inexplicable sense of loss he's known for as long as he can remember, he has to recover whatever it is that will help rid him of it.

"Well?" The girl's voice inquires as they meet halfway and something in him jolts to attention. He quickly checks his ridiculous reaction, clamps down on it firmly, and burrows his face deeper into the old worn cape draped about his neck, trying to hide under it. "Aren't you going to introduce us, Cid?"

He resists the crazy impulse to look up. How incredibly stupid he is to think anything will be different here when it's always been one disappointment after another. This world will be just the same as all the others.

And he'll continue on with his search. Relentlessly. Fruitlessly.

A man can only take so much, he thinks bitterly. How much longer must he keep this up? Moving from one world to the next, always fighting, always looking, never finding.

Desperation will drive him to make yet another idiotic bargain with some other devil but if he's really lucky this time, maybe it'll put an end to things for him, once and for all. Perhaps that's even what he's been seeking all along.

Brown boots appear on the carpet in front of his eyes, jarring him out of his thoughts. A pink dress. And the urge is just too strong, too compelling to ignore any longer. As if in a dream, he slowly follows the dress up, vaguely noting how the figure before him is bending at the waist to peer into his face, and runs smack into a pair of deep green eyes…and it's like he's been punched in the gut.

A soft, feminine gasp sounds in his ears.

He sucks in his breath. His ears roar and his head whirls.

From the midst of the whorl, spiraling, spinning about him, through the chaos and the upheaval, surrounding and occurring within him, only her face remains in focus. Crystal clear.

The green eyes shimmer with tears.

"_Cloud?"_

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_My pulses bound in exultation,  
And in my heart once more unfold  
The sense of awe and inspiration,  
The life, the tears, the love of old._

—_Pushkin_


End file.
